Is it okay to talk about the weather or should that topic be avoided if you want to have an interesting conversation? Is it important for our children to have good conversational skills? How do they get such skills?

Bushfire fighters are heroes but can school teachers be heroes too? Should we all know how to do CPR, just in case? And what about our children? Should they learn too?

Do the youngest children in the family sometimes miss out? Should parents make the effort to give them the same experiences as their older siblings?

And should we brush off other people's thanks? (Hey, it was nothing!) Or is it necessary for us to be gracious and accept them?

I hope you'll listen to this week's podcast to find out my answers to all these questions and much more!

I start this week's podcast with a belated introduction of me and my family. Maybe I should have done this in episode 1. Oh well, better late than never!

I talk about our visit to a professional audio studio and mull over ideas to improve my podcasts.

And finally I chat about adventures. Is it necessary for unschooling families to travel? Or can we find adventures at home?

I should add that I never dived to the BOTTOM of the lake to look at the map of the bush tracks. (That would have been very adventurous!) Words never come out perfectly when podcasting. The map was on a board BY the lake!

Last weekend we celebrated the birth and death days of our son Thomas. In this week's podcast I share some of Thomas' story. I ponder the question: How does a family homeschool during a crisis like a death in the family?

Christmas is approaching. Anyone grieving might find this joyful season very difficult. But is Christmas actually a season for the broken-hearted?

On a lighter note, I revisit a simple Christmas. I have a new idea!

I hope you will listen, regardless of whether you have lost a child. We all have ups and downs we have to deal with. They are part of life and we learn from them all.

In this week's podcast, I chat about teenagers with my own teenage daughters, Imogen (19), Charlotte (17) and Sophie (13). Many parents expect life to get difficult once their children turn 13. But will it? Are teenagers really trouble or are they unfairly labelled?

We talk about the pressures teenagers face. Do parents unwittingly magnify these pressures? Are rules necessary to keep teenagers safe, or will rules lead to rebellion? My daughters tell me what they think teenagers need instead of rules. We also talk about mistakes, forgiveness and honesty. And how, because of adult peer pressure, I made one of my teenager's life unnecessarily difficult.

Want to know more about unschooling? How about radical unschooling? (It’s not as scary or as wild as some people make out!) Join me as I share ideas, stories, homeschool record-keeping tips and resources for living an unschooling life of unconditional love.